Steam Community
Steam is a gaming platform where gamers can buy and play games, socialize, share and create content, and more. Developed by Valve Corporation, Steam offers DRM (Digital Right Management), matchmaking servers for multiplayer gaming, live broadcasts, and a social platform for content creation/sharing. Valve Valve, a video game developer/publisher/distributor of digital content, who’s mostly known for creating the ''Half-Life ''video game franchise as well as other cult classics such as ''Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress, ''and ''Portal, ''developed Steam with the purpose of patching or updating its games, thus making it mandatory to use and install in conjunction with Valve’s games. According to Valve’s “About Us” on their official website, “…we combine the resources and talent of a world-class company with the ethos of a small startup. With an engaged and vocal community of partners and players, our products and our company will continue to change and grow in ways we may never have predicted. Join us, and help inform what's next” (“At Valve we make games, Steam, and hardware.”). In other words, Valve values humble beginnings, innovation, and feedback from its community. This influences Steam Community’s functionality by emphasizing creation, originality, and discourse through features such as “Workshop,” “Discussions,” and “Artwork.” Affordances and Constraints Affordances on the Steam community home page include rectangular buttons such as the notifications buttons designed with colors that stand out from the background color, search bars that are already filled with the words “Search for products” or “Search for friends” which prompt users to find hubs or friends, a series of tabs (screenshots, artwork, broadcasts, and more) that prompt the user to categorize content that they wish to view, and highlighted or underlined elements such as news articles or tab categories that activate when the cursor (which turns into a pointing hand) is hovering over certain graphics, texts, or pictures, buttons, and so on. This home page encourages users to engage with the Steam community and browse original content made by other members by providing a never-ending feed of content similar to Facebook’s feed, and the search bars provide a call to action for users to search the community for specific content. All of these affordances are straightforward and easy to use because the home page isn’t busy or cluttered, thus providing a website that is easy to navigate and interactive with. Interface constraints include restricting the user from accessing the community market until the user (status pictured below) makes a valid Steam Store purchase “…that is between 7 days and a year old with not recent chargebacks or payment disputes” (“Community Market: Buy and sell items with community members for Steam Wallet funds”). The user must also be logged in to Steam with a verified device protected by Steam Guard, Steam’s proprietary security feature, in order to access the community marketplace. Until the user corrects these issues, buttons such as “Sell and item” and “Buy” have a faint appearance, signifying that these buttons cannot be used until the user makes a valid Steam Store purchase such as a full-fledged game; the community marketplace is mostly reserved for DLC (Downloadable Content) such as extra skins or outfits for characters, items, or maps that can be used within a certain game. Users may also be restricted from accessing Steam’s trade feature unless they meet similar criteria. Intuitive features on the home page include navigating/viewing community activity via the never-ending feed, using the search bar, and interacting with notifications. Oddly enough, there is a “Discussions” section or forum where users can talk about anything relating to steam that is not a tab on the home page. In order to go to this section, the user must hover the cursor over the “Community” button (which has no shape, just text), wait for a menu to appear, and click on “DISCUSSIONS”. This is a rather unintuitive and hidden feature of the Steam community interface. The same can be said for the market mentioned in the last paragraph in that it is not a tab on the home page, but hidden in the drop-down menu located within the “Community” button. Policies and rules According to “Rules and Guidelines For Steam: Discussions, Reviews, and User Generated Content”, users must not: • Flame or insult other members. • Bypass any filters • Abuse or encourage abuse of the Post Reporting System, meaning one must not report posts or content that does not violate any guidelines, or repeatedly report the same posts or content, or encourage other users to report content that does not violate any rules. • Post personally identifiable information (i.e. name, address, email, phone number, etc.); this may result in doxing or making one vulnerable to scams, hackers, and other inappropriate behavior. • Bump threads, meaning users must not post in a thread solely for the purpose of bringing that thread to the top of a thread list. For example, if someone makes a post with nothing but the word “bump”, this is considered a thread bump. • Derail a thread's topic. If the topic of a thread is about the PlayStation and someone starts talking about the Xbox, this is considered derailing a thread’s topic. • Post links to phishing sites • Post spam (i.e. +1, 10char, rickrolls) or Re-post Closed, Modified, Deleted Content • Repetitively post in the incorrect forum (example: trade requests belong in trading forum) • Openly argue with a moderator • Artificially manipulate the User Review system or voting/rating systems. This often occurs when a group of individuals target a specific game and give it below average reviews because it did not deliver its promises, the developer engaged in unethical business practices, or some sort of personal vendetta against the content being reviewed. In terms of content, users must not post anything that involves: • Porn, inappropriate or offensive content, warez or leaked content or anything else not safe for work (NSFW). • Discussion of piracy including, but not limited to: *Cracks, meaning modifying software in a way that bypasses features such as filters, safeguards, and other security measures. This is often done in the form of stolen serial numbers or key generators. *Key generators *Console emulators • Cheating, hacking, game exploits (in order to maintain and support a friendly and inviting gaming space. • Threats of violence or harassment, even as a joke • Posted copyright material such as magazine scans • Soliciting, begging, auctioning, raffling, selling, advertising, referrals • Racism, discrimination • Abusive language, including swearing • Drugs and alcohol • Religious, political, and other “prone to huge arguments” threads On top of these rules and guidelines, users must not “backseat moderate”. What this means is that users must not act as moderators and enforce rules. Moderating is to be done by the moderators, not anyone else. However, users are encouraged to report posts or content that violates Steam rules and guidelines. Repeated offenders will be banned by moderators from accessing the Steam Community. Steam also has a “Valve Video Policy” where users are encouraged to record and publish Valve related content, but only if it is for noncommercial purposes (with the exception of monetizing videos via YouTube partner program or other video sharing sites that have similar programs) ("Video Policy"). Identities and Communities Gaming identities are encouraged on the interface. These identities may be associated with fighting games, racing, shooting games, puzzle games, and so on. Female protagonists, intricate storylines or lore, longstanding franchises, favoritism in regard to gaming systems, fantasy themes, and other preferences can also be associated with these identities. Regardless, creative minds/artists seem to be the main f ocus or identity of the Steam Community. However, masculine topics/games also seem to be the main theme within the Steam Community. Of the eight popular hubs/games right now, seven are violent/combat oriented and star a male protagonist. Of the seven male protagonists, six are White and one is Latino. The game staring the male Latino protagonist, Just Cause 2, is the most popular out of the eight even though it was released 9 years ago. This all may be because the Steam Community mostly consists of White males. While information regarding who uses Steam Community in terms of race or ethnicity is not public, the worldwide player-base of Steam as a whole resides in North America, as pictured below in Steam’s “2018 Year in Review.” Roughly five years ago, Steam’s player-base consisted mostly of individuals from either North America or Europe. Over the next several years leading up to 2018, Steam has gained traction within Asia. This may be because Steam has made great efforts to be more accessible for international communities. “We added dozens of payment providers, bringing th e total supported to over 100 (even one called HappyMoney in South Korea). We also launched Steam wallet cards in Japan and Poland, which means we now accept cash payment in 45 countries. And we added Vietnamese & Latin American Spanish to the list of now 26 languages the Steam Client supports” (“Steam – 2018 Year in Review”). These efforts are valid in both a business and cultural standpoint, as indicated by the rise in the Asian player-base. In 2019, Steam will be coming to China by partnering with Perfect World, an online multiplayer game publisher. This expansion will surely increase Asia’s presence within Steam and cause a shift in identities found within the Steam Community. Steam has also made improvements to its Community feature last year as well: …we built more moderation tools and assembled a full-time moderation team to help ensure that your game forums remain healthy, to manage reports of harassment, and to deal with reported user generated content…we leveraged Google's Vision API and Amazon Rekognition (yes, it's really spelled that way) to identify inappropriate images and blur them by default (which is a feature that can always be turned off by customers). Other features we worked on include giving users more control over their privacy settings, complying with GDPR, and making it easier to add friends. And we also had some community building events, like the Spring Cleaning Event, the Salien Game during the Summer Sale, the Extremely Cozy Cottage for the Winter Sale, and the annual Steam Awards (“Steam - 2018 Year in Review”). These efforts to make Steam Community a healthy environment may improve inclusivity and tolerance for other communities. There is, however, no mention of making efforts to make Steam more accessible for the disabled community, such as making Xbox’s Adaptive controller, a controller specifically designed for those with physical limitations, compatible with Steam. Steam has made great strides in building a gaming community since its release in 2003. After nearly twenty years, Steam has become synonymous with video games, and is installed on nearly every computer that is owned by a gamer. Although it is far from being 100% inclusive or accurately representative of other communities, this is not necessarily a fault of Steam, but a fault of the entire gaming industry. Fortunately, more games staring strong female, LGBT+, disabled, people of color, and other under-represented characters are being released and critically acclaimed. It’s up to Steam to bring these games to light and not let them be left in the shadows of other exclusive games if Steam wishes to invite or create new identities within its community. References # “At Valve we make games, Steam, and hardware”. (n.d.). Retrieved February 14, 2019, from https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/about # “Community Market: Buy and sell items with community members for Steam Wallet funds”. (n.d.). Retrieved February 14, 2019, from https://steamcommunity.com/market/ # “Rules and Guidelines For Steam: Discussions, Reviews, and User Generated Content”. (n.d.). Retrieved February 14, 2019, from https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=4045-USHJ-3810 # “Steam - 2018 Year in Review”. (n.d.). Retrieved February 14, 2019, from https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/1697194621363928453 # “Video Policy”. (n.d.). Retrieved February 14, 2019, from https://store.steampowered.com/video_policy